The game was named after the international rally driver Colin McRae very popular in Europe, who provided technical advice during development. As a result the game achieved massive popularity in Europe. In the latest episode, Travis Pastrana was brought to add comments in the game, so for the US version he appears also on the box of the game. Seems that this change increased the US selling, in conclusion the overall selling.

Big difference

Two years of development were involved in Dirt, and the results and radical changes can be seen. With the latest product of the Colin McRae rally racing series, Codemaster decided to introduce a wide variety of rally sports. Besides the classical rally, you can play CORR races, rallyraid races, hillclimb races, rallycross, and crossover races.

Of course every rally discipline with its own car models. You can drive CORR trucks and buggies, 4wd or 2wd rally cars, classic 4wd and rwd cars, hillclimb unlimited or big rigs class cars. As always every car has its own way of driving, differences being visible even between cars of the same class. So there are cars for everyone. The Colin McRae rally racing series has become more similar to Race Driver series where the accent is put more on the multitude of racing events of different styles. But it is far from the content huge size each Race Driver game brings.

Championship mode

Some of the old fans of Colin McRae rally racing series will probably be disappointing of Codemaster's decision of almost giving up the traditional rally racing. The Championship mode is the only one that features six different rally locations: Japan, Spain, UK, Germany, Australia, Italy. The mode offers you to start with the UK rally choosing between a short or a long rally implying 4 or six stages. In the most classical Colin McRae rally racing series manner, the service area is available only after you complete two stages in a row. Apparently the developers emphasized more on the setup part of the car instead of the damage managing system. The setup mode is very similar with Race Driver system. You can setup the wheels' camber and toe angle, the suspension stiffness or the ride height, the transmission final drive, gear ratios, the brakes, etc.

If you think about this it's a quite long list, but the problem is that if you are not a newbie you can complete the championship on the most difficult level without changing anything in the setup of the car. More than this the game automatically gives a default setup for every rally which is sufficient to compete in good parameters. A minus for the lack of freedom in choosing the type of wheels. In older Colin McRae games, the wheels could be changed depending of the ground surface. But in DiRT this option really disappeared from the setup of the car, the game alone choosing the type of the wheels. Codemaster gave up also the snow rallies. The rally of Sweden present from the beginning of the series was completely forgotten. Instead they introduce a new one: the Italy rally. Present in the WRC just for a couple of years, this rally is very similar to the one in reality, and brings diversity through ground surface and environment. In one rally there are only three or four unique tracks, other being reverse versions of the first ones.

Career mode

The career mode is the most challenging one and represents the core of the game. Based on a pyramid system, you have to make your way to the top winning different events and unlocking new cars.

Not only that you will unlock them but you also have to buy them. The paying system is balanced so if you will not try to play on harder levels you will not be able to earn enough money to buy the next cars. In conclusion you will stop competing. The career mode brings all the new rally disciplines in which you will compete. You will jump from rally events to CORR events or crossover ones. There is a minimal number of points that you have to earn in order to progress to the next tier. There are ten tiers to complete until the last one and believe me you will have some work to do till you reach the top. But the difficulty grows progressive. You will start competing in events that include only a single race and you have to drive quite slow cars in order to get the pace later. While the rally events take place in the same locations as in the championship, the new ones feature new tracks and locations. Tracks like: Circuit de Ducs (France), Canberra Park (Australia), Knockhill (UK) are world known for the rallycross championships held on them. I just want to add the presence of the legendary Pikes Peak divided into three parts so you can easily learn it and then master it.